Customer Reviews:
 I Hate This Book April 7, 2008
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I hate this book. For years I have been telling fellow natural history writers that the field guide model is stagnant, boring and dull, and anyone who wastes his time writing one could be doing something more useful, like picking up trash on the roadside. I have insisted there is nothing new and interesting that can come out of additional field guides -- it has all been done and overdone.
So what happens? This guy Laws comes along and makes me a liar. And even a fool. He does a field guide that sparkles. That identifies everything you run into. That is based on paintings better than I can do. That is organized in a uniquely instinctive way.
And worst of all, that puts together the whole unlikely package with all the charm and humor that Laws expresses in person. That's why I hate this book.
Everybody should buy one to see if they hate it too.
Sierra Nevada Nature Guide February 22, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
If you live (or visit) the Sierra Nevada's and like nature, this is a must field guide to purchase. Very helpful and well illustrated.
If you bring only one flora and fauna identification guide to the Sierra Nevada, it should definitely be The Laws Field Guide! February 4, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Written and packed with over 2700 full-color illustrations by naturalist and educator John Muir Laws, The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada is a pinpoint-accurate (through rigorous field testing) guidebook to the wide variety of Sierra natural life, including trees, wildflowers, ferns, fungi, lichens, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, insects, and other small animals. Over 1700 species are described with indications of their behavior, adaptations, and interactions with other species. Additional information not found in other wildlife guides includes notes on animal tracks, seasonal star charts, weather patterns, cloud formations and much more. Highly recommended; if you bring only one flora and fauna identification guide to the Sierra Nevada, it should definitely be The Laws Field Guide!
There are treasures here January 28, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Every little boy or girl who ever took home a shell from the shore or an acorn from the forest or a flower from the field will fall in love with this wonderful book.
The website of " John Muir Laws " is bright and cheery and perfectly reflects this amazing book. Laws looks at the world with amazement. "I am constantly amazed by things. The diversity of chipmunks, for example." And, he has the skills of a poet and an artist that communicate his amazement onto the pages. Take a look at his drawings of spiders either in the book or online -- you'll be convinced.
Six years of amazement and work, 366 pages, 2,800 illustrations, each painted by Laws. The new field guide begins with "Small Fungi Growing on Wood" (specifically, Calocera cornea, the staghorn jelly fungus) and ends with stars (the night sky at winter solstice, Dec. 22). It includes 1,700 species of flowers, trees, bugs, frogs, snails, skunks, birds, fish, rodents.
It's the height of romance: a lone amateur, now 41 years old, lives in a $600 apartment in San Francisco and spends years hiking in the Sierra Nevada, painting mushrooms and moles and the Milky Way. His publisher, Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley, a not-for-profit publisher, puts it exactly right: "this book was done by somebody who is stunned by the beauty of the world."
Laws writes on his website that Sierra Birds: A Hiker's Guide, the "draft of the bird section of the guide was so enthusiastically received (the reviewers did not want to part with their drafts) that we published it separately as a stand alone book. It is remarkably easy to use and is now carried by everyone from environmental educators to back country rangers."
The Sierra Nevada is wonderful to hike in. It is wonderful to dream about. There is no better guide to the Sierra Nevada than The Laws Field Guide whether you are in your boots or in your easy chair. Buy it, hike it and dream.
Robert C. Ross 2008
JM Laws is my hero and this book is why January 23, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
The title of my review pretty much says it. When this book first came out, I just thought "Wow! I wish I knew all that stuff!"
I already knew Laws' work from his thin book on Sierra Birds (largely or entirely included in the present field guide). It is slim, has fewer species than most and almost no text (owing no doubt to Laws legendary dyslexia), but time and again I find that his thin book was the easiest to use and most likely to allow me to find and ID a bird.
This is just the next ten steps - reptiles, bushes, flowers, birds, bugs (lots of bugs), mosses, and even constellations. If I were going to recommend just one book for hiking the Sierra, this would definitely be it.
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